don't tell me how it ends
by shadowsapex
Summary: Ichigo is bitten as a plague that turns infected into monsters spreads through Karakura Town. As he and two disgraced scientists try to fight back, Ichigo discovers that a madman wants to use him as a weapon to conquer the worlds and a 20-year secret surrounds him and his family. It must be Tuesday.
1. how it ends

_Content warnings: Suicide, attempted suicide, major character death, gore,_ _mild body horror, unwilling transformation, loss of autonomy_

 _I have to say, this is going to be pretty dark. It shouldn't be quite this dark in later chapters. But just be warned, throughout reading this fic._

* * *

Unassuming Karakura Town has the dubious honor of being ground zero.

What happened? Half the day was like any other. The other half, a nightmare from the pits of hell.

It all starts with a fire truck going by, sirens roaring. Two more emergency vehicles follow ten minutes later. The sound of breaking glass comes from the distance, followed by gunshots.

"What's going on?" Karin says, trying to peek out a window. "A riot?"

Their dad cheerfully tells them not to worry and also not to leave the house. None of the local TV stations are broadcasting, so he heads out himself to check.

He comes back with a young man mauled by bites like a wild animal's and on the verge of succumbing to shock from blood loss. Hauling him to the nearest bed, he starts binding his wounds, grim-faced and without a word. He doesn't tell any of them what he saw outside.

"Call up the hospital," he says to Ichigo midway. "He needs a blood transfusion."

The phone rings strangely long before someone answers. "Kurosaki!" the voice snaps before Ichigo can get a word out. "Don't go outside! Don't open the door for anyone!"

"Th—this is the hospital, right?" Ichigo says. "We've got a badly injured man—"

"Why are you treating them?" cries the voice. "Throw him back outside! Do not treat any of them!"

"What the hell are you saying?"

"If they're bitten, they're beyond help! Quick, before it's too late! Lock and bar the doors, with that man _outside!_ "

"You're crazy," Ichigo says. "Are you listening to yourself?"

"Your father knows I'm not crazy. Go, tell him now. Tell him the message is from Ishida Ryuuken."

The phone clicks. Ichigo's left standing there feeling like the floor's been pulled out from under him. He turns back into the hallway to the room where they'd left the patient, only for his father to stagger out cursing and slam the door behind him.

He's cradling his wrist in his hands. Blood flows from a bite wound made with blunt human teeth. The sight chills Ichigo to the core.

"Do you know who Ishida is?" Ichigo says.

"Manager of Karakura General Hospital. He picked up the phone himself? Must be bad."  
Ichigo wets his lips. "You gotta get that disinfected."

They both jump as a thump comes from the closed door behind Isshin. The knob rattles but doesn't turn. Someone inside screams incoherently and slams against the door again.

"He shouldn't be alive," Isshin says. He shakes his head. "Get the medical kit from the bathroom."

Ichigo runs for it. A white-faced Yuzu trails him back to the clinic's front lobby, where Isshin is pacing and looking out from the glass doors. A fire alarm shrieks somewhere. A car's horn honks. A plume of smoke snakes from the top of a distant building.

"Lock the doors," Ichigo blurts out. Isshin gives him a curious look.

"It's what Ishida-san said. He also said—" He breaks off at another thump against the patient's door. He barely forces out the rest of the sentence. "He said the ones who were bitten were beyond help."

Isshin's silent for a while. "Give me that kit," he says.

Ichigo passes the canvas bag over to him. He sets it down on the tiled floor, riffling one-handedly through its contents.

"Dad, you're hurt," Yuzu says. She sounds on the verge of tears.

Isshin has a strange smile on his face. "Don't worry about daddy."

"What's happening?" she says. "I don't understand." She presses her face against Ichigo's side, fingers clutching his shirt. He can feel her shaking against him.

Isshin's found a syringe and a vial of clear fluid. He fills the syringe, watches the liquid inside slosh, then looks up at them with the same strange smile. "I love you. Tell Karin I love her."

He plunges the syringe into his arm.

"Wait," Ichigo says. "What are you doing?"

He pushes Yuzu away and stumbles a step forward. "What are you doing?!"  
He knocks the syringe out of Isshin's hands. Less than an quarter of the liquid is left. He rummages through the bag until he finds the vial. The label reads morphine.

"No. No!" He grabs Isshin by the shoulders. The man's eyes are closed, his breathing too shallow. He slumps over in Ichigo's arms.

"Dad!" Yuzu wails.

Ichigo hears feet patter in the house and Karin comes running down the hallway. "What? What's happening?"

The scene before her stops her in her tracks. Ichigo holding his father, staring at her unfocusedly. Yuzu on her knees, hand covering her mouth and tears streaming from her eyes.

The door to the patient's room down the hall explodes into matchsticks. What's standing there is no longer human. A white mask with grinning skull teeth covers its face, two red pinpoints glaring out from the eyeholes. Spikes of bone jut from its body, still covered with the tattered remains of clothes. Through the center of its chest is a hole Ichigo can see clean through. It takes an uneven step down the hall.

Yuzu screams. Ichigo sets his father's body on the floor and gets up slowly. He can't think. He just feels numb.

"Yuzu, Karin," he says. "Run."

"Ichigo," Karin says. "What's that look in your eyes? No way, Ichigo, you have to come too!"

"Just run, now!"

The monster lunges in the blink of an eye. Ichigo barely turns fast enough to see it behind him before one claw lands a crushing blow to the center of his chest. He's thrown back until he slams into the far wall and slumps to the floor, his breath like acid in his lungs, warm blood slicking the floor beneath him as he tries to get up.

Yuzu screams.

"No!" Karin wails. "No, let go of her!"

This has to be a nightmare. Ichigo's hand falls on the leg of a small wooden stand nearby. He forces himself up.

The monster sinks its teeth into Yuzu's shoulder. Blood is streaming down her back as she struggles helplessly. Karin's crawling along the floor to her, blood smeared across her face from a cut on her forehead.

Ichigo charges, swinging the piece of furniture, and smashes it into the monster's face.

It wails, staggering back and letting go of Yuzu, who collapses back onto the floor. One flailing claw knocks into the stand and shatters it into kindling. Ichigo picks up one of the longer pieces, sturdy and splintered to a sharp end. The monster's howling and clutching at its mask, which Ichigo's put a shallow crack through.

While it's distracted, Ichigo lunges at it with a hoarse cry and jabs the stick into its gut. He yanks it out, a jet of blood splashing across his clothes and face. He stabs it in again.

The monster's claws rip deep into his arm and it falls limp at his side. He can see blood flowing across his skin, dripping from his fingers, but he doesn't feel any pain. He swaps the stick to his other hand and goes for the throat. He can see the monster lunging for him, its mouth gaping with sharp teeth bared, then it drops to the floor twitching as Ichigo stumbles over his feet to get back, leaving the bloodstained stake skewered through its neck.

He whirls around. Karin has gotten the medical kit and is bandaging Yuzu's shoulder with shaky fingers. Yuzu looks pale but conscious, leaning against her.

Karin looks up. "Oh god, Ichigo!"

Ichigo looks down at himself. His shirt is torn and soaked in blood from deep gashes in his ribs and right arm. He's dizzy, he realizes. He slumps to the ground as Karin runs to him.

"I'm fine," he grumbles, as Karin starts winding bandages around his arm. "Is Yuzu okay?"

Karin glances back at Yuzu and nods automatically. "What's going on, Ichigo?" she says in a shaking voice. "What was that monster?"

"I don't know," Ichigo says. He pushes her away and gets unsteadily to his feet. His eyes wander out the window. A car's crashed down the street, smoke pouring from under its hood. Shambling up the sidewalk, arms dragging along the ground, is another one of the masked monsters.

"Run!" Ichigo chokes out. He shoves Karin in the direction of the stairs and runs across the floor to pick up Yuzu. As they're halfway up the stairs, the glass door shatters behind them.

Ichigo sets Yuzu on her feet at the top of the stairs, looking frantically around the hallway. Where can he find a weapon?

"Hide somewhere," he says to Yuzu and Karin, and shoves them down the hall.

"You too," Karin says, but she takes Yuzu's uninjured arm and starts running while half-supporting her sister.

Ichigo turns to look back down the stairs, one hand on the banister. He can feel the tremors throughout the house as the monster smashes its way through the bottom floor rooms. What can he do? He's never felt so helpless. Pain throbs in his arm and chest. His ribs stab him every time he tries to breathe. He's barely staying on his feet, weariness dragging at his limbs.

If he gave himself up to that thing, would it leave his family alone?

No, he can't think like that. He has to kill it. He has to save Yuzu and Karin.

The bathroom. He'll shatter the mirror and use a shard as a blade. He takes a step down the hall and nearly collapses, grabbing at the wall for support.

Then he hears Karin scream.

"No," he gasps, clawing his way to his feet. He drags himself along the wall to the room Yuzu and Karin are in. His hand reaches out and closes weakly around the doorknob.

The door flies open. A hand grabs Ichigo around the neck. He holds up an arm to shield himself and teeth sink into his forearm.

Reflexively, he lashes out at his attacker and Karin's head snaps back as his fist slams into her cheek. She staggers back and collapses on the floor in a heap.

"No!" Ichigo says, rushing forward. Karin has several messy wounds over her arms and one ankle, marks of blunt teeth and fingernails. Ichigo doesn't reach her before another small body slams into him. Yuzu's arms clutch around him, nails breaking skin, and her teeth sink into his shoulder.

He grabs her by the neck, trying to yank her off. Her eyes are dull, no recognition in them. She bares teeth at him, stained red by blood.

"Yuzu! Dammit, dammit!" His knee jabs into her gut. Her grip on him loosens for a moment and he throws her off him and onto the floor. Her head bangs on the floorboards and her eyes slowly slide shut.

"No," Ichigo chokes out, backing away. He stares uncomprehendingly at the bite marks across his arm, oozing blood. He turns and runs.

The door of his room slams shut behind him. He turns the lock, then tries to drag a shelf in front of it. He barely gets it a few feet along the floor before collapsing.

Dragging himself over to his desk, he grabs its edge to haul himself up and picks up the cell phone left on it. He collapses on his bed, curling up against the wall. It takes him several seconds of staring blankly at the phone before his panicked mind can recall the general hospital's number. His fingers are almost shaking too badly to dial it.

"Is this Ryuuken-san?" he whispers into the phone.

The same voice as before is on the other end. "Kurosaki Ichigo? What happened?"

"How long do I have?" Ichigo says.

For what seems like a long time, the phone is silent. Finally, Ryuuken says, "That depends on where the bite was, how close to major blood vessels. Ten to fifteen minutes is what I've seen."

"I'm going to turn into one of those things?" He can't quite keep his voice from wavering.

"I'm sorry," Ryuuken says. "Death is kinder."

"What are those monsters?"

"We call them hollows. I don't know where the infection came from. I don't know how it could have spread like this."

"You gotta find a cure," Ichigo says. His thoughts are muddled. He doesn't really know what he's saying. "You gotta save my sisters. Please. At least them."

"Your sisters were bitten?" Ryuuken says. Ichigo's silence is his answer.

"What happened to your father?"

"He's dead," Ichigo whispers. "I'm sorry, Ryuuken-san. I guess I'm out of time."

The phone tumbles from his fingers. On the other end, he hears a fist slam on something and a curse. He grabs his windowsill and drags himself up, pressing his forehead against the cool pane. Weariness drags at his eyelids.

He raises a hand and smashes a fist into the window. The glass shatters, tinkling on the ground far below. He yanks a large shard out of the frame, not feeling it even when the edges slice into his palm and fingers.

He stares at the point of the glass as it glints in the weak afternoon light, long like a crooked dagger and as sharp. In a single swift movement, he plunges it into his throat.

He yanks it out again, barely able to grab onto its edges with the blood slicking it, and stares at his fingers dripping with scarlet. The blade falls to the bed. He clutches at his neck with shaking fingers, unable to stem the blood gushing over his fingers in time with his pulse. Darkness gathers at the edges of his vision as he collapses on his bed.

* * *

Hurts. Everything hurts. His chest…

It feels like something inside him has been gouged out…

Pain… his chest, his _head_ …

Is he dead? It can't hurt this much if he's dead, can it?

His eyes crack open. He's staring at the wall of his room. He's lying in an uncomfortable heap on his bed, the covers soaked in blood. His clothes are too.

He props himself up on his arms and his eyes fall on the bloody shard of glass near his hand. He freezes. His blood. He stares at the bed. All his blood.

He's supposed to be dead. Why isn't he dead?

He stares down at his hand. Still human. His shaking fingers reach up to his face and touch the smooth surface of a mask around his left eye.

He screams. His fingers pry at it, digging into its edges until he screams again at the pain stabbing through his core. He shoves himself off the bed and staggers to his feet, legs unsteady beneath him, somehow managing to fumble his way through his door's lock and make it to the bathroom.

He slumps against the sink counter. His eyes are fixed on his reflection in the mirror.

A ragged fragment of a mask surrounds his left eye, white with diagonal slashes of red. And his eyes, what's wrong with his eyes? Black and a haunting yellow stare back at him, like a predator's, like a night creature's.

Those eyes aren't human. He's not human.

Why is he still sane?

He wipes the blood from his neck the best he can and fingers the thin scar that's all that's left of a fatal wound. The cuts on his arms and chest have healed without a trace.

What happened to him? What is he?

He drags himself away from the counter and puts a hand on the doorknob. The door flies open, swinging edge knocking into him and sending him staggering back. A white blur throws itself upon him, hooking on with talons sinking into his shoulders.

Karin's lifeless eyes stare at him, a mask taking over half her face. Her small body is a ruin of spikes and bone plates jutting out of her skin, covered with half-dried blood. He barely recognizes her.

"Karin," he whispers hoarsely. "Karin, can't you hear me? Say something."

His little sister can't be gone forever, can she? She's right in front of him.

Karin howls in glee and sinks elongated teeth into his shoulder. Some unknown force drives Ichigo's limbs. He tears her grip from him, grabs her by the arm and twists, and slams her to the floor.

He backs away, gasping. Blood's trickling from his shoulder down his back, but the wound had almost immediately started healing. He blinks at his hand. Blood stains his fingers, tipped with heavy black claws. Karin picks herself up like a broken puppet, one arm dangling at her side, skin rent from the marks of those same claws.

No. How could he hurt his sisters? Karin rushes forward and Ichigo steps back until his back hits the wall and then Karin tackles him, claws carving through his skin, bloodstained teeth bared.

Ichigo closes his eyes. This is fine. Isn't this his penance for failing to protect his sisters? Maybe his life can be enough payment.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Karin's claws tear across his chest, shattering ribs and spraying blood across the walls and floor. Ichigo's knocked to the ground. The tiled floor is slick with his blood. Karin shrieks with glee and pounces.

 _'Get up.'_

Some voice that's not his, ringing like a command in his mind.

 _'You idiot. You're not gonna die here.'_

He watches his hand move, grab Karin by the throat and shove her back as he gets to his feet, bracing against the wall for support. His body's a puppet under someone else's command. His hand tightens on Karin's throat, forcing her head back. A pulse rushes under his fingers, strong and quickened by panic.

A flick of his hand, his claws tear her throat open, and she crumples to the floor, mouth agape in silent shock.

Ichigo stares at his sister, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the ceiling, the blood spilling from her arteries across the floor so bright red it's almost unreal. He turns away and heaves up the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

 _'You're weak,'_ the voice in his head tells him. ' _You're so unbearably weak. Just give your body over to me already. You'll never feel pain again.'_

Who are you, Ichigo wonders, but he doesn't want to know.

He looks over to Karin. Her mask and the bone armor over her body have faded away, leaving her small battered figure lying like a discarded doll in a pool of cooling blood. Ichigo reaches over with shaking hands and slides her eyelids shut. Her body feels too light as he scoops it up, her head and arms dangling limply.

He steps out the door and a whirlwind of claws sets upon him and once again, some instinct drives his movements. His hand slams into the figure's chest and sends it tumbling down the stairs. He walks back, sets Karin gently down, and turns around to see the creature claw its way upstairs.

A growl rattles behind its mask. A crown of horns encircles its head, smooth white armor covering its body and a unnatural hole through the center of its chest. It has bone-thin arms and elongated spiked fingers tipped with claws. Only the blonde hair matted about its head and the tatters of clothes it wears tell him who it used to be.

"Yuzu," Ichigo gasps. She cocks her head at him and then she's a white blur through the air. Claws sink into Ichigo's arm. He lashes out with one hand and hears bone snap, Yuzu's screech of pain. Stop, stop, he's screaming at himself in his mind but he can't do anything, he's nothing but an observer in his own body.

Yuzu tries to pull back with Ichigo's hand still clamped around her broken arm. She rams her head against his body, horns goring deep gouges through his chest. He closes his eyes, feeling the pain ebb away as the wound regenerates.

The heel of his palm lashes out and smashes into one side of her mask, shattering it and throwing Yuzu's head back. Ichigo loses his grip on her arm as she collapses on the floorboards. Her eyes are closed, her breathing shallow. Her hair is matted to her brow with sweat, skin pallid beneath the dried blood streaking it.

"Yuzu," Ichigo croaks, sinking to his knees next to her. "Yuzu, please. Look at me."

Her eyes creep open. They fix blindly on Ichigo. Her head lolls on her neck as she claws her way upright, her mask slowly regrowing across her face.

Ichigo lifts a clawed hand, reaching for her helplessly. She throws herself on Ichigo, seizing him by his shoulders and arms and pinning him in place.

Ichigo stays down. His arm find her back and wrap around her in an embrace. Yuzu's teeth sink into his neck.

"I'm sorry, Yuzu," he says. His hand grabs the back of her neck and wrenches her teeth away from him. Black spots dance in front of his eyes as a sudden rush of dizziness hits him. That'll be the blood loss. He's more surprised at how quickly he recovers.

His thumb grazes along her neck and presses against her carotid artery. He slices it open with a claw, blood spraying into the air and his face. Yuzu howls and her arm reaches for him. He stabs his claws deeper, until he feels the strength in that tiny body drain away and she falls limp to the floor in a sea of blood, hers and his own.

Her mask shatters and the armor encasing her body slowly fades away. "Yuzu," Ichigo says, a convulsive gasp that tears at his throat.

He lifts her in his arms, his head pressing against her shoulder. No heartbeat or breath, just a lingering warmth quickly fleeing her body.

He raises his head and screams.

* * *

He stumbles through the door of his bedroom. His wounds are all healed now, but his shirt hangs in tatters and his clothes are too dyed in blood to tell their original color. Walking over to his bed, he picks up his cell phone and perches on a corner not stained by blood. It looks like a murder took place here. That's right, he killed himself here. He can't stop feeling like it worked and this is his punishment.

He flips the phone open and dials up the hospital again. It's a good thing he only needs to press redial this time, because he can hardly work the phone buttons with clawed hands.

"Ryuuken-san," he says as it picks up. "Where are you?"

Silence from the other end for a moment. "Kurosaki!" the man nearly shouts into the phone. "How?"

Ichigo hacks a laugh. "I don't know. You at the hospital? How are things there?"

"A nightmare," Ryuuken says. "I'm trapped in my office. Been contemplating putting a bullet through my brain."

"Don't!" Ichigo smashes the rest of his window, knocks out the shards of glass in the bottom frame, and climbs onto the windowsill. "How much longer can you hold out? I'm coming for you."

Ryuuken laughs tiredly. " _You're_ coming?"

* * *

"Tatsuki, you there? Good."

"Ichigo! Wow, things must be bad if you're calling. I'm guessing you've seen the news?"

"Seen? Sure. Not on the news."

"..It's true?"

"Stay where you are. Lock all the doors and windows and lie low. Don't let anyone in."

"Ichigo… are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Don't lie to me."

"Worry about yourself, Tatsuki."

"Ichigo, please, tell me what's going on! You can't just act like this. You know I'm your friend, so why can't you tell me?"

"...Stay safe, Tatsuki."

* * *

When Kurosaki Ichigo called him, he was succumbing to hollowfication, right? Who could fake that kind of fear and desperation in their voice?

No one he's seen the hollowfication serum used on ever survived. No one's ever resisted for more than about half an hour. Even that was an exceptional case.

If Ichigo had been bitten, he couldn't be the one Ryuuken's speaking to on the phone right now. Just who—what—is he guiding toward his office? His gun is trained on the barricaded oak doors. He supposes he'll find his answer when those doors open, one way or another.

Why would Ichigo come for him? He must know. He's Masaki's son, after all.

For his role in bringing about this disaster now unfolding, Ryuuken too must pay.

* * *

 _Thank you for reading! Please, drop me a line about what you think!_


	2. infiltration

His nerves are frayed to hell just trying to navigate the hospital. The place is crawling with masked monsters—hollows. Doors are smashed, desks and beds overturned, clear signs of struggle everywhere, but he's seen no uninfected humans yet. Just blood splattered on walls and, in one room, the remains of one.

The corridors are all blind corners and white walls and he can hardly tell one apart from another. Ryuuken's trying to direct him over the phone, but Ichigo isn't even sure where he currently is. He rounds a corner and manages to almost run into a hollow. His foot lashes out in a kick that catches it in the torso and slams it into the far wall.

"All right?" Ryuuken says.

Ichigo grunts. "Just about."

He has to go down the hallway he'd thrown the hollow down, and it quickly gets to its feet and charges to meet him. He slips his phone into his pocket to free up his hand, then grabs the hollow's swinging claw, yanks it off balance and to the floor, and smashes its mask and skull together with a kick.

He grabs the phone out of his pocket again as he runs. "Right or left?"

"Right. Ought to be, at least."

Ichigo nods and heads down the hallway. He immediately hears a howl and the sounds of claws against wood. He skids around the next corner and spots two hollows, one pounding at a heavy wooden door, the other pacing on all fours behind it.

"Oi!" he shouts. The hollows immediately turn to him.

"Don't be reckless," Ryuuken says tersely.

Ichigo dodges past the first slow strike and sinks his claws into the inside of its elbow. He leaps over its next swipe and kicks its head into the wall. He lands behind it. Before he can find his footing, a lashing tail slams into him out of nowhere, his ribs crunching under its spiked end. The phone skitters out of his hand.

"Kurosaki!" Ryuuken says. Ichigo can hear him clear through the door. "I told you not to take risks!"

Ichigo picks himself up, shaking his head to clear it. His wound is already regenerating. He's almost used to it by now.

"Kurosaki, get down!" Ryuuken shouts. A second later, the door slams open. A silver-haired man wearing a doctor's coat stands in the doorway, wielding a handgun which he immediately swerves to point at the hollow attacking Ichigo. With three cracks, three bullets bury in its skull. He turns it on the smaller hollow and fires once, but the bullet deflects off the horns on its forehead. He pulls the trigger again and the gun clicks.

Before the hollow can make a move, Ichigo tackles it and pins it to the floor, driving his claws into its unarmored throat until it stops struggling.

He looks up and his eyes meet with the silver-haired man's.

The man backs away, pointing the gun at Ichigo and seemingly forgetting it's unloaded. "Kurosaki! What is—"

His left leg buckles underneath his weight and he has to grab at the doorframe to stay upright. His foot looks swollen, wrapped in gauze and taped to a makeshift splint.

"Ryuuken-san," Ichigo says. "You okay?"

Ryuuken raises an eyebrow at him. "You're asking me? Who's the one covered in blood?"

Ichigo shrugs with one shoulder. "I'm better off than you." He sticks a hand out to the doctor. "Come on, let's got out of here."

Ryuuken stares at his hand, then at him. "You said you got bitten."

Ichigo turns away with a scowl. "I did." He glances down the hallway. "Hurry up. Before anything else turns up here."

"Can I trust you?" Ryuuken says.

"Will you stay here if you don't?"

"No." Ryuuken takes Ichigo's hand and lets him lend a shoulder for support as he hobbles.

"You don't know me. Why'd you come help me?"

"You know something about all this," Ichigo says. "If you're the one responsible then we're going to have a problem with each other. If you know a way to fix it, then I need you. Either way, I can't have you die here."

"I can't fix it," Ryuuken says.

Ichigo's silent for several seconds as they navigate the hospital's corridors. "I'm gonna save you anyway."

"The main lobby's the other direction," Ryuuken says.

"Too many hollows. I didn't enter through there."

"Then where?"

"The parking lot was crawling with hollows, all mobbing the entrances. I climbed to the second floor and busted in through a window."

"Climbing down from the second floor isn't exactly ideal for me, Kurosaki."

"I get that! I'm trying to think! You come up with something."

"We have to get to the basement first," Ryuuken says. "I need access to the weapons store there."

"There's a weapons store in the basement? Of the hospital?"

"You don't need to worry about it. The access stairs are that way."

"There are hollows that way."

"I think you'll find that there are hollows every way."

Ichigo sighs shortly. He leaves Ryuuken to cover his back, takes a breath, and jumps into the fray before his misgivings can stop him. The rhythm of battle is just ingrained habit by now—dodge that swipe, slash that tendon, that artery, duck out of the spray of blood that follows.

He takes a step back, breathing hard and watching one hollow fall to the ground before him—then nearly gets beheaded by a set of heavy claws. He leaps back, catches the arm strike thrown at him, but its force throws him off his feet and slams him into the wall behind him.

He growls and, bracing his feet against the wall, twists the arm to one side, sending the huge hollow slamming into its smaller companion and hurling them both to the floor. He gets up, pain stabbing through his ribs every time he breathes, his knees nearly buckling when they take his weight. He has to force himself to take every step, but he reaches the hollows before they get up and dispatches both with a claw to the throat.

He looks back to check on Ryuuken and finds the man studying him with a frown. "You're exhausted."

"I'm not…" He trails off as he realizes the denial is pointless. How many hollows has he fought, how many near-fatal wounds has he had to regenerate from? He's been running on nothing but adrenaline ever since the start of this nightmare. He might be still on his feet only thanks to sheer stubbornness by now. There's some part of his mind that just wants to curl up in a corner and scream until all of this stops being real.

He shakes his head. "It's not like we can stop." Though it's more like if he stops, he might never get back up.

Ryuuken sighs. "Basement for now. Then I know of a safe place. This hospital was supposed to be our stronghold, but it's been compromised. We'll have to hope my colleague has managed better for himself."

"What does that mean?" Ichigo says. Either Ryuuken really has been insane all along or Ichigo doesn't understand this situation at all.

Ryuuken doesn't respond so Ichigo switches tracks. "Why are there so many hollows in here anyway?"

Ryuuken gives him an assessing look. "The infection originated here. I was lax. An enemy caught up with me."

"Would this be another _colleague_?" Ichigo says. Ryuuken doesn't say anything else until they arrive at the basement room, which is behind a solid-looking featureless steel door. It glides soundlessly open when Ryuuken presses his hand against some kind of scanner device Ichigo's never seen the likes of before.

Ryuuken disappears into the room and leaves Ichigo outside. Ichigo tries the scanner out of part curiosity and part boredom and gets a result of 'reiatsu not identified, access denied'.

Ryuuken emerges twenty minutes later and tosses a small black and silver device to him, a curved tube with a grip that fits comfortably in his hand and a faint blue glow spilling from its ends.

"What's this?"

In response, Ryuuken holds up an identical one and light bursts from the ends in a flash that forces Ichigo to look away. When he looks back, two slightly arching limbs extend from both ends into the shape of a slim blue-white bow, seemingly constructed of solid light.

"A spirit bow," Ryuuken says. "My own creation."

Ichigo turns over the one in his hand. "How's that work?"

"There's no time to teach you," Ryuuken says. "Just hold onto that. Heads up."

Ichigo snatches another small metal gadget out of the air—a straight tube, purely silver, with faint blue light emitting from one end.

"That should be more suited to you. A Seele Schneider. Feed your reiryoku into it and it will manifest a blade designed to cut through spiritual bodies."

Ichigo stares at him. "Spiritual bodies?"

"Do you think a hollow is any sort of physical creature belonging to this realm? Put your spiritual energy into it."

"My…" Ichigo frowns at the silver tube, turning it over in his hands, then looks back at Ryuuken. "What's that now?"

Ryuuken looks like he's trying hard not to sigh. "You've been pulling off superhuman feats all this time. That's you using your innate spirit energy, albeit unconsciously, to augment your natural capabilities. Channeling it to your injuries to heal them, to your limbs to enhance your strength, endurance, and reflexes, to your feet to move faster than physically possible. So now you need to consciously control the flow of that energy and channel it into that weapon."

Spiritual energy? He has felt a drain on something inside him every time he's used his regeneration. But his regeneration is instinct. It'd take more effort on his part to have it not kick in. And even the fast movement he's managed—he feels like he wouldn't be able to do it if he was thinking about how. He barely even knows what his spirit energy is, let alone how to direct it.

He knows one trick. He feels for the flame blazing bright inside him and flares it as high as he can, until his power shakes the air around him. The tube in his hand bursts into raging black energy that forms a rough blade at one end, crackling like a lightning bolt in his grip and surging around his hand. He drops it with a wince. The blade vanishes, clattering to the ground as a hilt once again.

Ichigo flexes his hand gingerly, watching the minor burns heal. He reaches down and picks up the hilt, still smoking.

Ryuuken looks a bit pale. He turns toward the door. "Never mind. Figure it out on the way. We better get going."

* * *

Urahara busts inside the clinic to find a hollow tearing at Isshin's body. He dispatches the hollow with a single blow and leans down to Isshin to check vital signs, only confirming what his sensors have already told him—no one is alive in the house.

Ichigo can't be dead too, can he? It seems clear what happened here, with the shattered glass, the smashed drywall and furniture, the splatters of blood covering the floor. Urahara prays to every god he doesn't believe in that the boy's alive.

He sighs, standing up by Isshin's side. "I'm sorry." he says. "My contingencies failed. It really is the worst-case scenario after all."

Upstairs, he finds the bodies of Ichigo's sisters, covered in claw marks, blood splashing the walls and floor around them. No marks of teeth. A hollow didn't get to them? But the claws…

He brings out his scanner and has it perform another search for Ichigo's spirit energy, this time lowering the recognition threshold. Instantly, he finds a 68% match, a strange and powerful reiatsu lingering around the clinic and on the girls' bodies. His initial analysis just says it's close to a hollow's. What could that mean? He's already closely analyzed every type of hollow he knows. His system wouldn't fail to identify one.

He increases the range of the scan and halfway across town, picks up the same signal again at the Karakura General Hospital. Strange. What could Ichigo want there?

...Could it be Ryuuken?

Ichigo doesn't know. He's certain he doesn't know. But he's unmistakably at the hospital run by Urahara's colleague, the only other human who knows what's going on, and Urahara can even weakly detect Ryuuken near Ichigo.

If he's that close to a hollow, then Urahara will get there too late.

He really does fail everyone around him.

* * *

Two hollows are smashing their way through the main lobby. Ichigo leaps forward, the Seele Schneider in hand, and cuts them down with one slash each.

Half his concentration is just going toward maintaining the blade's shape and making sure it doesn't explode in his hands, and he's never used a sword before anyway. It's unwieldy to fight this way. Part of him just longs to do what comes naturally to him, hand-to-hand, but the sword cleaves through hide and armor and bone alike with hardly any resistance. He can't say it isn't helpful.

"Is the room clear?" Ryuuken says from the hallway behind him. Ichigo opens his mouth and then a hollow leaps in from outside with a crash of glass, smashing an even bigger hole through an already shattered window

A glowing bolt whizzes through the air past Ichigo and slams through the hollow's skull. It tumbles back with a wail and collapses, its body fading. Ichigo turns to see Ryuuken behind him, bow changed into a small crossbow so he can balance on his crutch with his other hand.

The lobby is quiet. Ryuuken steps out into it carefully. "You said there were a lot of hollows."

"Maybe they left," Ichigo says, almost hopefully.

They creep across the reception area, keeping to walls and behind desks, and by the time they're halfway across they're walking openly, Ryuuken's crutch clacking with every step, broken glass and plaster crunching under Ichigo's feet.

Why is this place so silent? Has he really never noticed how loud these sounds were before?

Ichigo peers out one of the broken front windows, back pressed against the wall next to it. "I'm gonna go check," he mutters, jumping through it outside.

"Wait," Ryuuken hisses. "Don't just—"

Ichigo slips on some shards of glass and lands unbalanced. He barely has time to look up and take in the packed parking lot, the smoking and overturned cars. A huge force slams into him like a sledgehammer and sends him flying.

He lands on the asphalt so hard he bounces, tumbling until his back hits a wall. He can't help the wild scream that comes from him at the jolt of pain through his shoulder. Glass on the floor cuts into his arms and cheek. Lying crumpled against the wall, he blinks dazedly as multiple huge shadows fall on him. Hollows, about a dozen of them, surrounding him in a tight circle, with more prowling the parking lot aimlessly or flocking to his location.

"Kurosaki!" Ryuuken shouts. From the sounds of his crutch, he's hurrying toward the window the best he can.

"Stay back!" Ichigo shouts hoarsely. He scrabbles in the dust, finding the Seele Schneider he dropped and wrapping his fingers around its hilt. He tries to pick himself up, but his shoulder erupts in pain like his bones are dissolving in acid and he collapses back on the floor in a tangle of limbs. He can't even think about moving his arm. Is it broken? It's dislocated at best.

The hollows around him don't attack, just cut off his escape and watch his every move with dull glowing eyes. They look almost as if they're waiting for something.

Ichigo props himself up on one elbow, breathing hard. The crowd of hollows parts to let a creature bigger than themselves through. Its shadow falls over Ichigo—a truck-sized four-legged beast covered in ragged grey fur and looking like a cross between a cat, an ankylosaurus, and a siege weapon. White armor covers its back, shoulders, and tail, studded with spikes the length of swords. It bares an eerily humanlike grin at Ichigo, flashing canines long enough to jut out of its mouth.

It turns to the hollows behind it and growls lowly. One by one, they disperse, wandering away across the parking lot or sniffing at the window Ryuuken's behind.

Ichigo gets up, forcing short hissed breaths through clenched teeth. He props himself against the wall behind him and gingerly feels his shoulder. The joint's definitely dislocated. He takes a shaky breath to steady himself, clamps his teeth down on his hand, and rams his shoulder into the wall behind him.

The explosion of pain sets lights dancing in front of his eyes. He can't quite keep back a choked cry from the back of his throat. He tastes blood and lets go of his hand to find his teeth have broken skin.

The pain in his shoulder quickly fades. When he can move it again, he flexes it to make sure it still works, then dives out of the way as the hollow pounces. A swipe of its paw reduces the wall behind him to rubble.

He straightens up, wiping blood from his cheek and backing up to try and draw the hollow away from Ryuuken. Behind its huge shape, he sees a flurry of blue arrows fly from the broken window and cut down the first rank of hollows. So Ryuuken's switched back to his longbow. He should be able to hold back the hollows for a good while, but he also can't walk with his broken ankle while wielding a bow with both hands.

Ichigo turns his attention back to the cat hollow. "Hey, big ugly! You wanna go one-on-one? I'd be glad to."

He doesn't have the start of an idea for how to defeat it, but he's not feeling in the most rational mood today. He activates the Seele Schneider, the red and black energy of its blade crackling hungrily in his hands.

The hollow growls, sounding amused. "You're weak, child. It's I who will feast today."

"Oh," Ichigo says. "It talks."

"What?" the hollow says, sounding affronted. "Of course I talk. Don't you?"

Ichigo twitches. "I… I'm not a hollow!"

The hollow's growl sounds like laughter this time. They charge at each other, Ichigo jumping to one side at the last moment. As it barrels past him, he leaps and his sword bites into the armor plate on its shoulder, drawing a spray of blood.

It snarls and turns around, but Ichigo's already leapt onto its back. He grabs onto a curved spike and raises his sword, only for the hollow to swing a heavy armor-plated tail at him, tipped with a vicious-looking spur of bone like a mace. Ichigo leaps off, but its tail catches his foot in midair, a spike ripping into his ankle.

He lands hard on one leg and falls, the flare of pain through his ankle taking his breath away. His concentration on his weapon falters and the blade flickers and vanishes. Gritting his teeth, he looks up to see the hollow charging, feet cracking concrete as they slam into the ground, raising one paw to bring dagger-sized claws down on him.

Ichigo lifts the Seele Schneider and activates it just in time to block the claws as they swing down. His back hits the ground, his arms straining to hold the hollow back. He turns the blade and slashes up, slicing through a claw and two of its toes.

The cat yowls and draws its paw back. It hobbles away, leaving blood droplets across the ground as it makes distance for another charge.

Ichigo gets up, gingerly putting weight on his injured foot, only for a stab of pain to shoot through his ankle. It's not as debilitating as before, though. He grimaces and stays standing, holding his sword in front of him in what he recalls as a basic kendo pose.

At a shattering sound of glass, he looks back. A hollow had thrust its head through one of the lobby windows, only to reel back with several arrows stuck through its skull, crashing to the ground. The surrounding hollows seem to be drawing closer. And isn't Ryuuken shooting less arrows than he was?

Ichigo turns and runs for Ryuuken. A huge weight slams into his back, claws scoring brands of pain through his flesh. It throws him to the dust, sending him sprawling. His mind curses himself over and over as he struggles upright, breathing harshly, warm blood trickling down his back.

"Fool boy," the cat sneers. "The human's as good as dead. Stand and face me."

Ichigo gets up slowly, gritting his teeth at the pain in his foot. His wounds aren't healing, he realizes with a chill. He's out of energy.

He raises his sword, trying to steady his trembling hands, and dives to one side as the hollow's tail plows a furrow into the ground beside him. His injured leg collapses and he falls to one knee. The hollow swipes down with his tail again. He holds his sword over his head, deflecting its tip off the edge and scoring a deep gouge into the bone.

A swinging paw slams into his chest, the tip of one claw slicing between his ribs. It sends him tumbling across the ground, his sword clattering out of his hand, shards of broken stone and metal grazing his skin. He struggles to prop himself up. His chest and back burn every time he breathes. His eyes take a long time to focus on the hollow, who's prowling toward him at a leisurely pace, sure in its victory.

Ichigo kneels on his hands and knees, his head throbbing, just trying to breathe. His limbs won't respond to him. Is he going to die here?

The hollow raises one huge paw, extending gleaming black claws.

He's not gonna die here!

The claws swing down and Ichigo ducks them and grabs the hollow's leg. A surge of foreign strength floods through him, like burning electricity through his limbs. He stands and yanks the hollow off its feet, throwing it to the ground hard enough to shatter concrete. His sword is blazing with energy in his hand again. He leaps at the fallen hollow, lashing out with his blade. It severs its paw with no resistance.

The hollow howls in pain, scrabbling at the ground. "How? What did you do? You were supposed to be dying! Die already!"

Its words cut off as Ichigo thrusts his sword through its throat.

He yanks it out. Blood splatters across his already-stained clothes and face. Blinking slowly, he raises a hand and wipes at it across his cheek. He stares at his hand and licks it, smearing blood across his mouth.

A wild laugh comes from his lips, high and veering on the edge of insanity. A vicious smile spreads across his face. Raising his sword, he advances on the hollow, who fixes one dimming green eye on him in a look of fury and terror.

The sound of broken glass comes from behind him. Ichigo pauses, frowning vaguely. What is it? He's forgetting—

He turns to see Ryuuken trapped in a hollow's hand, struggling and cursing. He manages to get one arm free and instantly a thin blue blade appears in his hand, forged of the same solid light as his bow. He slashes upward at the hollow's wrist with a spray of blood. It howls and drops him. Ryuuken lands on his broken ankle and collapses with a hoarse scream.

The sound's like someone dumped a bucket of cold water on Ichigo. "No," he gasps, stumbling forward.

One of the hollows surrounding Ryuuken pounces. The man's lying on the ground unmoving.

Ichigo runs. The world blurs around him as he pumps energy to his feet. He breaks into the center of the crowd of hollows, grabs Ryuuken, and turns around with his blade lashing at the attacking hollow and cleaving its mask in two. The rest let loose a cacophony of howls and advance. Ichigo stands and howls back, with enough savagery to make the hollows hesitate.

"Kurosaki," Ryuuken groans. "What are you doing? You can't beat them all."

Ichigo glances at him. Ryuuken stiffens. Ichigo turns away. He doesn't know what the man sees in his eyes.

He sets Ryuuken on the ground and takes a step toward the hollows. They all watch him, none willing to attack. His reiatsu lashes around him like living darkness, making some back away.

He raises one hand, fingers curled, a spark of red light gathering between his claws and becoming a tightly-focused orb of energy.

He's come this far. He refuses to die, he refuses to fail, he refuses to give up any more than he already has.

Anything in his way can just _disappear_.

"Cero!" he roars.

A tidal wave of red light drowns out everything. Ichigo stumbles a step back, planting his feet against the force of the blast. The heat takes the breath from his lungs and the roar makes the very air tremble. Ichigo almost collapses when the attack dissipates.

He lets his arm drop to his side, breathing raggedly. The hollows nearest him had been incinerated, several more lying on the ground disintegrating. The stragglers hang back, eyes pinned to him and unwilling to approach.

Ichigo steps forward, tries to call upon his powers, and it seems like all the fatigue he hadn't felt until this moment crashes down on him at once. Before he knows it, his knees hit the floor. The cut through his ribs and the gashes across his back burn dully. He looks up. A weight drags at his eyelids as he focuses on the handful of remaining hollows.

"Kurosaki!" says a voice from behind him. Ryuuken. "What did you do? Are you alright?"

Ichigo blinks at him over his shoulder. "Ryuuken. I'm sorry."

He slumps to the ground, his eyes sliding shut. The concrete is hard and cold and its rough surface presses against his cheek, but he feels none of it. He really could take a nap here, he thinks.

" _Kurosaki_ ," Ryuuken hisses. "The hollows are approaching!"

Ichigo cracks his eyes open to see a glowing arrow streak toward a hollow, only for a clawed hand to bat it out of the air easily. Ryuuken's crouched over him, bow drawn. Blood drips from where the string had cut into his fingers, and his hand clutches the bow too tensely. The man's clearly near his limit too.

Ichigo failed. He wasn't strong enough. They both die here.

He closes his eyes. What was he living for anyway? Running on borrowed time.

A hum that doesn't seem purely electrical fills the air. He hears a sharp intake of breath from Ryuuken. "You!"

Ichigo forces his eyes open for the second time, just as a strangely-dressed man jumps out of the air in front of him, wooden clogs clacking on the asphalt. He's wearing a strange contraption strapped to his back that looks like a clunky black jetpack, a blue glow emanating from the bottom of its thrusters that fades away as the man lands. When the hum stops, Ichigo realizes that it had sounded similar to his activated Seele Schneider.

The man gives the machine a run for its money in terms of strangeness. He wears a dark coat and old-fashioned clothes, and a striped bucket hat traps his unruly blonde hair to his head. He glances back at Ryuuken with a criminally cheerful grin. "Long time no see, Ishida-san! Wish we could be meeting under better circumstances. Ah, this is what happens when you decline all my invitations to tea. Time flies by and the next thing you know you're trying to catch up on old things while hell on earth is unfolding all around you."

"I have no intention of catching up, Urahara," Ryuuken says coldly. "Tell me you have a way out of here."

"But certainly," the man says. His eyes fall on Ichigo and his grin falters for the first time. "Ah, that one you have there wouldn't be the Kurosaki kid?"

"I'll explain later," Ryuuken says. "Make yourself useful now."

Urahara puts a hand on his hat. "Of course." he turns around, facing the hollows, and draws a thin metal sword from his cane. He holds it up. "Awaken, Benihime."

Ichigo closes his eyes, but flashes of crimson light still seem to stab through his eyelids. At some point, he falls into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

 _Please review! Reviews are the best._


	3. bedtime stories

_Warning: loss of autonomy, gore, traumatic death, mentions of experimentation_

* * *

He sees his sisters alive in the dream.

They're backing away from him, looking tense and fearful. He frowns. _"What's wrong? Why're you looking at me like that?"_

He steps up toward Yuzu, who backs up and presses herself against a wall. Her face looks so pale and terrified that he pauses, holding a hand out placatingly toward her. _"Hey. It's me! I'm not gonna—"_

His hand grabs Yuzu's shoulder and clamps onto it with an iron grip.

He blinks. _"W-what—"_

He yanks her toward him. She screams. Ichigo can't do anything, can't control his body, helpless to do anything but watch. His hand grabs her by the neck and drags her off her feet. His teeth sink into her throat.

The taste of blood gushing into his mouth is all too vivid. The warmth of it, the pulse beginning to falter, the scent that immediately clogs his nose like he's drowning. He can feel tendons snapping between his teeth. He pulls his mouth away, blood spraying in his face.

Yuzu's body falls to the ground in a crumpled heap, eyes staring and blank. Ichigo feels like vomiting. He still can't stop himself as he turns slowly to Karin, who's pressed against the wall on the other side of the room, looking around but finding no escape.

He slowly lifts a hand and wipes the blood from his mouth. His legs force him to advance toward her. He's never seen that look in her eyes, not directed at him, not at anybody.

His hand clamps around her neck. When have his fingers become claws? They press into her flesh and draw beads of red.

He slams her back into the wall behind her. Her head hits the wall and lolls forward. He slams her into it again, watching blood spray the wall in macabre patterns, watching her body jerk. Again, and she falls limp in his hand. He finally releases her, stepping back, his legs failing him. He falls to his knees and screams.

* * *

Ichigo wakes up and immediately leaps to his feet, staggering to keep his balance. His head spins and he slumps against the wall behind him, panting harshly. He doesn't recognize his surroundings. He's in a barren room with water-stained white walls and a heavy-looking metal door across from him. He lunges for it as soon as he spots it.

Halfway across the room, something jerks taut around his ankle and sends him crashing to the ground, jarring his chin against the hard surface. He blinks, half-dazed and his thoughts not yet caught up with his body, and twists to look over his shoulder at the manacle around his ankle, chained to the back wall.

He picks himself up from the floor with a groan, rubbing at his jaw, blinking hard and trying to clear his head. He yanks his foot back but the chain doesn't give. He stomps his other foot down on it, not really noticing the low growl from his throat. The metal just makes a slight dent in the cement floor. He looks up at the walls of the room—small, too small, just a few paces on each side, a large closet really—and a hoarse whimper comes from him as he realizes he's trapped.

He whirls around and slams a hand into the wall behind him with a scream. "Let me out!" His claws shred the plaster surface. " _Let me out!"_

He kicks at the place the chain is bolted to the wall, but it doesn't budge. He slams his fist into the wall so hard he splits his knuckles and leaves blood splashed against the off-white surface. Backing off, he stares at the wound, his hand shaking uncontrollably, watching it heal.

He slumps against the wall with a hoarse groan, trying to calm his breathing. What's he doing here? He doesn't remember…

His gaze wanders around the room. It's empty except for the bare lightbulb near the door, turned off. The only light comes from under the door. His surroundings should be quite dark, but Ichigo can see well enough, if in greyscale, that he hadn't even noticed until now.

Damn it, it's all his fault, his slip-up. Why did he let his guard down so much? When did he decide Ryuuken could be trusted anyway? He can sense the man's presence somewhere close by—no doubt another of the powers he was thrust with without so much as an explanation.

Ichigo grits his teeth and presses the heel of his palm against his forehead. How did he wind up here? He must have passed out at some point. He doesn't remember that. The last thing he remembers is—

He was fighting that bastard cat hollow. How he won Ichigo has no idea. The end of that fight was nothing more than a blur. He remembers standing in front of Ryuuken, guarding him from an impossible number of hollows. He can't remember what he did, only the aftermath with the hollows dead or dying and weariness hitting him like a sledgehammer and darkness rising to claim his sight. Except—something happened before that. The man who dropped out of the sky. He wasn't just an exhaustion-induced hallucination?

What had Ryuuken called him?—Urahara or something. They'd acted like they knew each other too.

Ichigo slides down against the wall to the floor, scrubbing a shaky hand over his face. He winces and claps a hand on his shoulder, then blinks and reaches under his shirt to find bandages over his back. His gaze turns to his ankle and finds that bandaged too. Both injuries are healed without a trace, and his shirt's also been replaced. This one seems to advertise the Urahara Shouten.

Who did the first aid? Was it Ryuuken?

Stomping footsteps approach the door, and it crashes open. Ichigo squints against the sudden light. His eyes meet with Ryuuken, who's staring at him in open surprise and an edge of wariness. The man looks him over carefully, like he's assessing his condition, then lets out a breath. "You don't have to wake up with such a racket."

Ichigo scowls. "Lemme out of here."

Ryuuken steps back, turning to the figure behind him. The blonde man from earlier pokes his head through the doorway, and his eyes widen as he spots Ichigo. "Ah! I'm glad to see you up, Kurosaki-san. How are you feeling?"

Ichigo glares at him. "Are you deaf? Let me out of here!"

"I'm sorry," the man says, but his eyes don't show regret, they just continue watching Ichigo shrewdly. "I can't do that. I hope you understand."

Ichigo leaps to his feet. "What do you mean you can't?"

Ryuuken sighs and turns to walk away. "Good luck with him. Try not to get killed. If it's by him, you would deserve it."

"Ah," Urahara stares after his footsteps clacking down the hall. "He's temperamental." He blinks at Ichigo, who's glowering at him from across the room. "Oh, yes. Why we're keeping you here. We must take precautions, you see."

"Precautions," Ichigo growls.

The man takes a fan from a coat pocket and taps the end of it against his chin. "Precisely. I suppose you wouldn't know, but you do carry the hollowfication toxin in your bite. You're also a vector of transmission. I'll admit the chance of you biting either of us is low, but I hope you see that it's a risk we can't afford to take. We're not all so blessed with partial immunity."

Ichigo growls under his breath, his claws digging into the wall behind him. "Then toss me outside for the hollows. Why are you keeping me here?"

The man sighs. "What would you do if we let you go?"

"I—" Ichigo's hand clenches into a fist at his side. "I need to find my friends. They must be in danger. I can't just leave them to fend for themselves." He looks up. "How long have I been asleep?"

"It's been nearly half a day," Urahara says. "I'm sorry, but your friends could be anywhere, and anything could have happened to them."

"They're not dead," Ichigo says. "I can feel them. Let me go."

Urahara blinks but hides his surprise quickly. "If they've survived so far, they're taking care of themselves. What danger do you suppose you could save them from in the next twenty minutes that they haven't run into over the past four hours?"

It chafes to admit it, but he's right. Ichigo's friends aren't in danger right now.

"You totally exhausted yourself back at the hospital," Urahara says. "You can't be fully recovered yet. You could get yourself killed trying to fight a hollow in your condition. I can't allow you to throw yourself out there without regard to your own safety."

"That's not for you to decide," Ichigo says. "How does it matter to you anyway, if I die or not? I don't know you."

Urahara flips his fan open in front of his face. "Hm, perhaps not, but I do know you. I was there when you were born. You can believe me or not, but I'm an old family friend."

Ichigo scowls. "Who exactly are you?"

"Urahara Kisuke," the man says without batting an eye. "But a lowly candy shop owner."

"You're like Ryuuken," Ichigo says flatly.

Urahara 'hmm's. "That may be. Then again, I don't quite know what you mean."

Ichigo leans forward. "Don't play dumb."

"Oh, my," Urahara says. His wrist twitches holding his fan like he'd like to flip it open, but he sighs and drops that hand to his side. "The story of who I am is a long one. As for why you matter, what ties you to the situation unfolding right now… that story is also a long one."

"What do you mean?" Ichigo says. "Aren't you interested in me because…" He finds his thumb involuntarily brushing against the scar on his throat.

"How strange," Urahara says. "You're asking a question you already know the answer to? That doesn't seem like you."

"What am I?" Ichigo says quietly.

"I couldn't exactly say, Kurosaki-san. I've never seen anything like you. But I must say I did expect this from you."

"What?" Ichigo says. "Expected what?"

Urahara gives him a sideways look. "That you would achieve the next evolution of a hollow."

Ichigo jerks back violently. He stares down at his hands, the spiked claws still tipping his fingers, and can't shake the feeling that they're not really his. He presses a hand to the center of his chest and feels nothing, just empty space, a hole like any other hollow.

"No heart," he mutters. "That's why you call us hollows, huh?"

He grits his teeth, warring with himself over a morbid curiosity, then slips his shirt over his head and stares down at his chest. He can't help but flinch at the circular hole the size of his fist punched clean through the center of his chest, where his heart would be.

He can see right through it. He feels queasy. His hand passes through his chest with no resistance. There's really nothing there?

"That can't be real, right?" he mumbles feverishly. "How am I alive like this?"

"I don't know," Urahara says. "Evidently, you are. It's really rather intriguing."

"No!" Ichigo says. He staggers away from the wall, one hand bracing against it. His claws press into it, plaster crumbling under his fingers. "It's not intriguing! I have a hole through my chest, mad scientist! Do something about it!"

Urahara's shoulders slump. "Kurosaki-san… there is no cure for hollowfication."

Ichigo stares at him. All his panic leaves him and he slumps against the wall, suddenly weary. Why is he even surprised to hear this answer?

"It doesn't matter," he says. "I didn't care."

"I find that hard to believe," Urahara says.

Ichigo looks away. "Well, if you compare me to all those other people getting bitten and turning into monsters, I hardly matter, do I? I need a cure less than any of them. At least I look mostly human, and I don't know if I am still mostly human but at least I'm rational and I can think and the urges aren't—"

 _"Kurosaki-san,"_ Urahara says. "I don't save the world."

Ichigo blinks at him. "What does… _that_ mean? You can't? You can but you won't? What does—"

"It means, quite simply enough, I don't do things for people I don't know. Once I was young and foolish, and I didn't say it that way, but I was trying to save the world. It was simple arrogance. I don't do things for the world anymore. I do things for people who need them. Ichigo, if you tell me you want a cure, I would create one for you. I don't care how impossible it is. I would swear to do it with my own hands."

Ichigo stares at him. "I— I… Urahara-san, I didn't want a cure for me."

"I expect that of you," Urahara says. "What is it that you do want? I can already never make up for how I failed you, and I'm just going to be asking more of you."

"I don't know," Ichigo says. He slumps against the wall. His eyes flick up to meet Urahara's. "Tell me everything."

"Everything." Urahara sighs. "Yes, you more than anyone deserve to ask. Perhaps I should start with the man who did this, Aizen Sousuke."

Ichigo leans forward, his claws scraping against the wall. "Someone did this? To my town? Why would he?"

"It must be us," Urahara says wearily. "After so many years, he's found us. Or, I should say, he's found you and me. If I had to make a guess, I would say he's after my technology and your power."

Ichigo lets out a sharp hiss. "Then, what good's it do him to turn everyone into hollows?"

"I don't know," Urahara says. "Power? Conquest? Maybe it's just to show that he can. Who could know what that man is planning."

"You," Ichigo says. "You talk like you know him."

"Yes." Urahara's eyes stare past him. "Aizen was my partner on research into the question of eternal life."

Ichigo scowls. "So what, he's some sort of mad scientist trying to take over the world?"

"Nothing near so simple," Urahara says. "You make it sound like something a human could understand."

He sighs and steps forward, bowing his head. He closes his eyes. "I'm sorry, Ichigo. I have failed you. I have failed to protect your family. I have no right to ask anything of you. But I'm begging this of you right now, because you may be our only hope to defeat Aizen. You've barely awakened those powers, but they already surpass anything I've seen."

Ichigo frowns. "Awakened? What does that mean?"

Urahara meets his eyes, steely and serious. "Kurosaki Ichigo, you were born to great power."

Ichigo's voice is hoarse. "What does that…"

"I am about to tell you," Urahara says. "Your place in all this, the truth behind the creation of hollows."

He looks away, eyes distant. "We were scientists. Or we called ourselves scientists. To this day, I'm not sure that what we did was anything but a senseless waste of human life.

"There was me, Aizen, Ishida-san… and your mother."

"My mother?"

Ichigo stands up.

"My mother was a scientist?"

"It ended before you were born. She wouldn't have talked about it. No, it's all a bit too scary for a bedtime story."

"Why?" Ichigo's hands clench into fists at his side. "Why doesn't anyone tell me anything? Why don't I know anything about my own mother?"

He strides across the room and yanks Urahara toward him by the collar. "What else are you hiding about my life? I don't even know what I am! Tell me!"

Urahara sighs. "I'm sorry, Kurosaki-san."

Ichigo blinks and realizes his claws are digging into Urahara's throat. He snatches his hand back like he'd been burned, and sees blood smeared on his fingers.

He backs away until he hits the wall behind him. He shakes his head. "No, I'm sorry."

He slumps against the wall, claws digging into his arm. "You were right to lock me up. I'm pretty sure the transformation's affected my mind."

"You were under a great deal of stress," Urahara says. "In fact, I'd say you're taking everything surprisingly well."

Ichigo lets out a small broken laugh.

"Where was I?" Urahara says. "Ah, yes. It was all over before you were born.

"I told you we were doing research into immortality—improving human longevity and health. We took an avenue for this research that no one had ever gone down before, looking into an unknown factor called the power of the soul.

"We almost succeeded. Looking back, I can't see any way we could have prevented what happened next. But I suppose the research was forbidden for a reason."

"Forbidden?" Ichigo says.

"Yes. By our…" Urahara's lips twitch like he's telling a private joke. "Higher-ups."

"You see, it was us who created the first hollows.

"We called it the Zero Incident. We still haven't fully pieced together what happened. The surveillance footage simply cuts out mid-way. As far as we could determine, an unauthorized man entered our facility, bypassing all security systems like they weren't there, and came into contact with Subject Zero."

"Who's that?" Ichigo says.

Urahara's eyes look distant. "He was no god, and yet he was no man either." He focuses back on Ichigo. "His immortal cells were the basis of our experiments. In the aftermath of the Zero Incident, all those who had come in contact with his cells were turned into hollows.

"Almost everyone on the project was killed, and those who hadn't, I could count on my hands. All of them had escaped with me. The fallout caused quite a scandal, even though the details were almost immediately hushed up. I personally took the blame, stepped down, and destroyed all of our research, to prevent anyone from making progress in the same field. We changed our identities and came here—your mother, Ishida-san, your father, and I—and that was when we realized she was in the early stages of pregnancy."

His eyes fall on Ichigo like a physical weight. "You are not completely human. Analysis of your DNA and reiryoku structure confirm this."

Ichigo stares down at the floor soundlessly, his jaw clenched. His gaze wanders to his hands. His hand reaches toward his mask and he forces it back down. "That's why Aizen's interested in me," he mumbles.

"I don't know." There's something like defeat in the line of Urahara's shoulders. "I thought I could read his movements and was almost unforgivably wrong. I never expected him to sink to the level of using hollows. I never expected him to suddenly give up on making his moves in the shadows and take action on this scale. I never expected, after sixteen years of silence… Preparation was my only weapon. I neglected it. The aftermath is as you see, and it is as much my fault as it is Aizen's."

Ichigo straightens up. "That's bullshit, Hat-n-Clogs. If you couldn't have done anything, you couldn't have done anything."

Urahara turns his eyes away. "I could have done… much."

"Augh, what's the point of it?" Ichigo says. "It's in the past. We just gotta stop Aizen now, before he does more damage."

"Yes." Urahara sighs, seemingly wrestling with some misgiving. "Ichigo, I didn't want to put this on your shoulders. This wasn't meant to be your conflict."

Ichigo leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. "Bullshit," he says, a bitter smile twisting his lips. "You knew I was special since I was born." He opens his eyes. "And it sure as hell is my conflict now. I've made it mine. Now tell me where that Aizen bastard is, so I can go break his face and tell him what I think of him."

"Ichigo, I've already told you," Urahara says. "You still haven't recovered from the reiatsu exhaustion. You need to rest."

"Like hell," Ichigo says. "I'm fine."

"You can't defeat Aizen by rushing at him recklessly. There's nothing you can do right now. Have patience."

Ichigo bristles. "How can you tell me to have patience? Do you know what that fucker did—"

"Kurosaki-san." Urahara's voice has an edge to it. "I'm telling you you're no match for Aizen right now. Aizen stole from our labs a weapon called the hougyoku. I believe he's used it to gain immortality by now."

He levels his cane at Ichigo. "The reason why I am telling you this is because I think you are capable of becoming a match for Aizen. To that end, I'm offering to train you."

"Then train me now," Ichigo says.

"I think you need to rest now," Urahara says lightly. He steps toward the door. "Well, you've had a rough day. I'll leave you alone."

"Just say it if you need anything," he adds from the doorway. "I'll hear. After all, I have this room on constant surveillance."

Ichigo stiffens and looks around the walls and ceiling, but can't find anything. "Why you—"

The door clicks shut behind Urahara.

* * *

Ichigo snaps awake from a light doze, sitting bolt upright and blinking at his surroundings. He'd fallen asleep? It seems like someone had dragged a futon in here for him to sleep on at some point.

He frowns, scrubbing at his eyes. What was it that'd woken him? His breath catches in his throat as he realizes—his friends. One of the presences he's been keeping tabs on in his subconscious awareness all this time is gone.

The word comes to his lips without him realizing he's saying it. "Chad."

He scrambles to his feet and lunges for the door. The chain around his ankle sends him crashing to the ground again, barely breaking his fall with his hands. He pushes himself up and claws at the chain. "No, no, I don't have time for this—"

He raises one hand over the shackle, clenched into a fist, and tries to call upon his power. He slams his fist down, smashing the lock, and pries it off his ankle with both hands.

Kicking it off, he stands and charges, ramming his shoulder into the door. He's thrown a step back, rubbing his shoulder and clamping his teeth down on a hiss of pain. He kicks the door with all his strength and it rattles in its frame, the steel dented inward.

With a growl of frustration, he presses a hand against it and concentrates, focusing his energy in a way that comes to him without thought, half instinct and half forgotten memory. Red light gathers in his palm and detonates in a blinding flash, blasting the door from its frame in a screech of warped metal. It clatters to the floor before Ichigo. He dashes through the doorway, coughing from the smoke in the air, and finds himself at the end of a narrow hallway. He charges down it without pausing.

With the racket he's made, there's no way Urahara and Ryuuken don't know what he's up to. But the hallways he runs down stay dark and silent.

He passes an empty room with a small window. Perfect, easier than finding the door out. He runs into the room and nearly trips over a small black cat.

"Mrow," it says, eyes glimmering at him out of the dark.

It doesn't do anything so Ichigo disregards it, walking toward the window. He unlatches it and yanks it up, barely getting it open an inch.

"Mrow," the cat says, sounding insistent. He turns around to see it dragging a sheathed sword behind it. It drops it at Ichigo's feet.

Ichigo stares at the cat. "Huh? What are you doing with that?"

It gives him a reproachful-seeming look, then brings its forepaws down on one end of the sword, flipping it up. Ichigo catches the other end before it can hit him.

"You… want me to have it?" he says. It must not be a normal cat. Nothing of Urahara's has been normal so far.

The cat turns away with a flick of its tail, slinking toward the door. Ichigo goes back to forcing the window. A deep voice comes from behind him. "Don't do anything foolish, brat."

He stiffens and whirls around, but the cat has disappeared.

Maybe Urahara's just pranking him. Grumbling under his breath, he works the window open just enough for him to fit and shoulders his way out. He's standing in a small yard outside a small unassuming building. It's night. He's been out for an entire day.

He leaps onto the roof, closing his eyes and casting out his senses. "Chad," he mutters. "Chad, be alive, please be alive."

His eyes snap open. He thinks he sensed something. Could he have imagined it?

He leaps off the roof and runs.

* * *

 _*Worldbuilding*._

 _I don't know what I'm doing let's just hope I manage to get somewhere from here._

 _Please tell me if the background I've explained actually makes sense._

 _Please review, reviews are the best!_


	4. a night to find nightmares

He's back at the hospital. Most popular place in town today, it seems. From his perch atop a streetlamp at the edge of the parking lot, he can see the traffic jam crowding the whole place and the block around it, cars parked haphazardly and abandoned with their doors open, a scene of chaos frozen in time with all the people edited out. They must've driven or ran to the hospital in droves, not knowing it was already a deathtrap.

The place is awfully quiet now. Heck, everywhere is awfully quiet, save for a few hollows roaming around and howling at each other. It's a different world from the chaotic town he'd fought his way through to the hospital this morning, sirens and alarms ringing, screaming people who were more often than not beyond help by the time he reached them.

Is everyone in Karakura dead? Ichigo's hand clamps onto the pole underneath him until the metal creaks. Why isn't the government doing anything?

A howl rings through the night—from somewhere _near—_ and Ichigo nearly falls off the lamppost. He swings down from it onto a car, feeling the metal roof dent under his feet and hearing the dry crack of the windshield as he springs off it onto another. With the cars packed so close, it's easier to run over them than around. Somewhere in the distance, a brilliant blue-white light flares into existence, harsh like an electric arc lamp and throwing the area into stark brilliance and deep shadow.

Ichigo shields his eyes and barely stumbles to a stop before he falls off the car, squinting through the glare to see the light throw a circle of hulking dark figures surrounding it into silhouette.

A glowing streak like a directed bolt of lightning whizzes through the air and strikes one of the huge figures through its mask, sending it crashing to the ground. Another hollow roars and advances, and a flurry of bolts flies at a nearby car, ripping through its metal until one hits home and the car explodes with a fireball that drowns out everything else, right behind the hollows.

"Get moving!" a voice Ichigo doesn't recognize shouts. A hollow leaps into the circle of light, which gleams on the teeth of its mask for a second, then a glowing bolt cleaves through its skull.

As Ichigo maneuvers closer, he can see the motley group of humans struggling across the parking lot, one wielding a huge construct of light in his hands, another bent over carrying a huge shape, slowing their pace down to barely better than a crawl.

A hollow lunges at them out of the dark, fangs bared. A girl's voice cries out in fear. Ichigo runs, distance blurring under his feet, lashing out blindly when he lands in front of the hollow. His blade thumps into something solid like wood and slices clean through, and the hollow drops to his feet with its head nearly severed. Blood sprays through the air and splatters across his face.

He steps back, breathing hard, and turns around to see the girl staring at him, blue light catching in her wide eyes. Her one hand is at the hairpins gleaming against her auburn hair, the other clamped on the edge of her skirt with a white-knuckled grip. Ichigo has a nagging feeling like he should know her.

"You're in my class," he says. "...Inoue?" He remembers her mostly acting painfully shy near him, someone he'd only known as Tatsuki's friend.

"Kurosaki-kun," she breathes.

Ichigo's about to step forward when a dark blur leaps in front of him. A fist swings for his face. "Get away from Orihime!"

Ichigo reflexively steps back and raises his arm in a block, but by the time the fist smacks against his forearm, there's no force behind the blow.

Tatsuki gapes at him, her arm slack against his. "You— Ichigo—"

"Tatsuki," Ichigo says, feeling like his lungs have stopped working. "Why are you—"

He barely glimpses a streak of blue light at the edge of his vision. His hand flies up automatically and grabs the shaft of a glowing arrow, splintering it within his grasp. "What the hell!"

His eyes snap to the guy behind Tatsuki, wielding a huge bow of solid light which reflects off his eyeglasses and hides his eyes. Another arrow is notched and pointed at Ichigo's head. "That was a warning shot, hollow. If you don't leave, this one is going through your skull."

Ichigo looks him over, frowning. "That's Ryuuken's bow."

He immediately has to bat an arrow out of the air before it takes his eye out. The boy glowers at him. "How do you know my father?"

"Your _father?"_ Ichigo says, then regrets how incredulous he sounded. But still, "Ryuuken has a son?"

"He does, when it's convenient for him," the boy sneers and wow, Ichigo can see that.

He levels his arrow at Ichigo. "Step away from Inoue and Arisawa."

"Look," Ichigo says, taking a step forward. "As much as I'd like to watch _you_ get attacked by hollows—"

"Heads up!" Tatsuki shouts from behind him.

Ichigo whirls around and glimpses just a blur of a white mask and gleaming clawtips swinging for him, then Tatsuki's up in the air by its head, her foot driving into its jaw and whipping its head back with a loud crack. It topples back on the ground in an unmoving heap.

Tatsuki makes a perfect landing from what must've been a ten-foot jump. "Keep chatting, boys. I'll just fight the hollows by myself."

Ichigo gapes at her. "That's not karate."

Tatsuki rolls her eyes. "Orihime, mind taking care of Sado?" Then she plants a hand on Ichigo's head and shoves him down, letting a heavy set of claws like kitchen knives swing over them. "Can't think of anything better to do than talk right now, Ichigo?"

Ichigo straightens up with a huff, running a hand through his hair to sort it out. He glances behind him to see Orihime scamper toward a dark figure lying on the ground, her fingers at her hairpins and an orange shield of light appearing on the ground at her whispered command.

"Don't ignore me!" snaps the archer guy, and Ichigo's eyes turn to him. "Do you have a death wish, hollow?"

"For fuck's sake." Ichigo guts the hollow in front of him and turns around, flicking blood from his sword. "Don't you have better things than me to wave that bow at right now?"

The archer glowers at him, then turns his back to Ichigo, as if to say he suddenly doesn't consider Ichigo a threat at all. "If you do so much as make one wrong move, so help me—"

Ichigo rolls his eyes and turns away, cleaving a hollow's mask with a flick of his sword. "So," he says to Tatsuki, "what're you guys doing here? Why're you at the hospital surrounded by hollows in the middle of the night?"

Tatsuki snorts. "Ichigo, it's nine PM. And we're here because Ishida mentioned something about a secret bunker stashed with weapons underneath the hospital."

Ichigo glances over at Ishida. "You're stealing your dad's weapons?"

A flurry of arrows cuts down half a dozen hollows, then the archer whirls around, glaring at him. "No! They belong to me! How do you know about that, anyway? Why on earth would Ryuuken trust you with something like that?"

"Maybe because I saved his life," Ichigo says, turning back to the hollow horde.

"You wasted an afternoon," Ishida says.

"How can you say that?" Ichigo says quietly. "He's your dad."

Though, thinking back, Ryuuken had never shown concern toward his son, had he? Not that he's one to show concern in front of Ichigo, or anyone, or even to no one at all.

"Don't talk about things you don't understand," Ishida says.

Ichigo scowls, blocking a hollow's claw and forcing it down with a twist of his sword. He slices its arm off, then leaps out of the way of another crushing blow that smashes the ground at his feet. He steps back as Tatsuki vaults over his head and shatters its mask with one kick.

"Who is that guy anyway?" he mutters to Tatsuki. "Why'd you just follow him here?"

Tatsuki glances over her shoulder at him. "You can't be serious. You don't know him at all?"

"I feel like I might've seen him around the school before," Ichigo mutters.

Tatsuki rolls her eyes, then kicks a hollow to the ground. "He's in our class. He has been for the whole year."

Ichigo whirls around. "You're serious?"

"He's Ishida Uryuu!"

"Doesn't ring a bell." Ichigo slashes a hollow's throat out, turns to block a set of lunging fangs with his blade, swings to slice the hollow's head in two, but his sword gets caught in its horns and nearly wrenched out of his grip. He looks up just in time to see a hollow tackling him from the side, jaws slavering. Ichigo's eyes widen and he whirls around, unable to bring his sword around in time, gritting his teeth and raising his arm in an attempt to block.

A looming figure steps in front of Ichigo and swings an arm into the hollow's stomach, throwing it several feet and sending it skidding into cars, crushing them with a screech of metal.

"Chad!" Ichigo says. "You're okay?" He raises his sword almost automatically when the horned hollow attacks him again, bashes it back with the flat of his blade, and cleaves its mask apart.

Chad nods. "Inoue healed me."

He turns around and studies Ichigo wordlessly, his hair falling over his eyes and hiding his thoughts. "I'm glad you're okay," he finally says.

He raises an arm and armor flows across his skin and solidifies, black with a red stripe down the middle. He turns toward the direction of the hospital. "Get ready."

Glowing blue energy surrounds his arm and flares from the top of his shoulder. He draws back his hand, fingers curled into a fist, and hurls it at the hollows. "El Directo!"

A pulse of blue energy surges from his fist and blows all the hollows away as dark shapes in a rush of blazing light. Metal crunches and asphalt shatters under the force of the attack. The light fades, leaving a wide furrow blasted in the ground, cars reduced to twisted heaps thrown aside like aluminum cans, ash and smoke swirling in the air. All the hollows in that direction are eliminated, the remainder hesitating behind them.

"Okay," Chad says. "Let's run."

"What—" Ichigo nearly has his arm yanked from its socket as Tatsuki runs past and hauls him along. He jogs to keep up as the group tears for the hospital's front doors, Uryuu lingering behind to fire arrows over his shoulder.

Ichigo glances back at the sound of a roar to see one hollow forcing itself up over the horde, smashing skulls and limbs under its claws, and throwing its head back in a screeching howl. Red light gathers in its open mouth, compacting into an orb, then fires, sweeping across the parking lot in a wave of energy.

"Shit!" Ichigo says. "Keep running!" He twists out of Tatsuki's grip, flashes forward and grabs Uryuu by the collar, slinging him behind Ichigo to protests he ignores. Against the oncoming attack, he raises a hand and charges his own cero.

It leaves his fingertips just as the wave slams into him, a vacuum of heat that steals the breath from his lungs and throws him off his feet. His back slams into a pane of glass that shatters beneath him, sharp edges tearing into his skin like fangs. He tumbles to a stop across tiled floor littered with broken glass and lays sprawled on it, gasping for breath, staring up at the darkened ceiling lights.

He rolls onto his hands and knees with a groan, feeling glass dig into the palms of his hands. Several sets of footsteps thump toward him. "Kurosaki-kun!" someone cries.

He raises his head, blinking blearily and trying to focus on his surroundings. Moonlight streams in through the huge front windows, illuminating a sea of glittering glass and a lobby of overturned chairs and empty reception desks, dust settling over everything. The place seems quiet for now.

He sits up and doubles over with a sharp hiss, clutching at a deep gash through his ribs. Cuts litter his arms and chest, dripping blood over the floor, and his t-shirt looks like he was on the losing side of a knife fight.

"Are you alright?" comes a hesitant voice behind him. He glances over his shoulder to see Orihime kneeling next to him, craning her head at him in concern. She gasps. "You're bleeding."

"I'll be fine," Ichigo says.

She purses her lips. "I can heal you. It's not any trouble and it won't take very long."

He attempts a smile at her. "Really, I'm good. I can heal on my own."

"Seriously? " Tatsuki says, coming up from behind him. Ichigo has to crane his neck to look back at her. She grabs his arm and yanks it toward her, staring at the cuts slowly healing across his skin.

"Ow," Ichigo complains.

"What the heck." Tatsuki runs her thumb over his skin, where a light scar is all that remains of the wound that was there, and even that is quickly fading. "You have some sort of… Wolverine powers or something."

"Some sort of," Ichigo mutters, pulling his arm away. He stands with a wince, flexing his shoulder, and walks toward a hallway off to the side of the room. "So, where to, four-eyes? What's the plan?"

He glances back to see Uryuu bristling and looking a second away from pulling his bow on Ichigo. "Why're you still here?" he snaps.

Ichigo scowls, turning to lean against the wall behind him. "You're welcome for saving your life. No need to thank me for it or anything. I would've done it even if you were an ungrateful ass about it afterward."

"I didn't ask you to do anything!" Uryuu says. He raises his bow, making Ichigo squint against its light."I don't trust you. You better give me a good reason to, or I'll put an arrow through you before I regret not doing so earlier."

Ichigo narrows his eyes, taking a step forward. "I don't know. I just saved all your asses from a bunch of hollows. So what else do you want from me?"

An arrow flares into existence on Uryuu's bow, leveled at Ichigo's head. "Don't move."

A hand clamps onto Uryuu's bow from behind, spinning him around to face Tatsuki up close and personal. She plants a hand on her hip. "Would you lay off Ichigo? He's my friend. No one gave you the right to go around accusing people we trust."

Uryuu twists his bow out of Tatsuki's hand and yanks it back furiously. "That—" He jabs a finger at Ichigo, "is not your friend! You're putting us all in danger by defending it!"

"I know Ichigo!" Tatsuki says. "I know he would never hurt any of us! And I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust you, so don't push your luck!"

"You're a fool!" Uryuu says. "That thing you call your friend is a soul-consuming monster that used to be human!"

Tatsuki raises her fist, blue energy crackling around it and sparking in Uryuu's face. "Don't talk like that about Ichigo!"

"Stop!"

They both freeze. Tatsuki turns around, dropping her hand to her side. Ichigo's leaning against one wall in the hallway, claws hooked deep into the plaster and sending cracks through it, his breaths sharp through clenched teeth. His eyes don't meet with either of theirs.

"Stop it," he says. "Don't fight about me." He pulls his claws out of the wall one by one and pushes away from it, stepping into the room. His eyes skip over Tatsuki and lock onto Uryuu behind her.

Uryuu narrows his eyes and steps forward, planting himself between Tatsuki and Ichigo and raising his bow, even as Tatsuki grabs his shoulder and demands to know what he thinks he's doing. Ichigo keeps walking in unhurried steps.

"Let me ask something of you," he says. "You're leading my friends into an infested hellhole. Shouldn't I be the one to question if I can trust you?"

Uryuu draws back an arrow. "Stop right there."

Ichigo takes another step. His hand snaps up to snatch an arrow out of the air from a path that would've buried it in his chest. He flips the arrow around in his fingers and hurls it back with enough force to embed it into the floor at Uryuu's feet, cracking the tiles and sending chips flying.

"What would you do otherwise?" Ichigo says quietly. He takes another step, teeth bared in a snarl and one claw raised. "What _could_ you do?"

There it is. The beginnings of fear in the boy's eyes. So he does have some sense of self-preservation after all.

Uryuu takes a step back and raises his bow, light gathering in a wing behind his shoulder as he takes aim at Ichigo. "Licht—"

Tatsuki jumps between them. "Don't!"

A hand clamps down on Ichigo's shoulder. He freezes and looks up to see Chad standing behind him. He closes his eyes and stumbles back with a groan. "Shit…"

He opens his eyes and looks around to see Inoue with her fingertips white from being clasped together. Tatsuki looking back and forth between Uryuu and Ichigo like she's wondering who she can turn her back to, Uryuu looking at him with undisguised hate and Chad with a clear warning in his stance.

He shoves Chad's arm off him and backs away, not looking at anybody. "Sorry," he says hoarsely. He turns around, walking down the hallway.

"Wait!" Tatsuki says, lunging a step forward.

Ichigo runs.

* * *

Ichigo collapses against the railing at the edge of the roof, looking out over the darkened buildings of Karakura. The roof is empty except for him and silent except for the wind slowly whisking debris over its surface. Clutching at the railing like it's a lifeline, he leans out over the edge, staring at the skyline and waiting for his breath to slow from his mad dash up the stairs.

 _'Don't do that,'_ says a voice inside his mind.

Ichigo stiffens. He recognizes that voice, like claws grating against rough slate, and memories crash over him with terrible force so that they hurt deeper than any knife wound, they tug at the strings inside his chest. He grits his teeth. Already, the beginnings of panic is crawling up his throat and cutting off his breath.

"So it's you again," he mutters, his hands clamped against the rails until the cold metal makes his fingers numb.

The voice makes a derisive sound. It's formless and faceless but he can imagine it's rolling its eyes at him. _'That's what I mean. Stop flipping out over every little thing.'_

"Flipping out?" Ichigo hisses. "You know what I've lost. And you're saying—"

He stops, breathing uneven. Through the sting at the back of his eyes, he looks down to see his fingers warping the metal beneath them. He shoves himself away from the railing and starts pacing.

"My family is dead." He snaps out every word. "Everyone. And I couldn't do a thing. My sisters—"

He raises his hand to his face and stares at the claws tipping his fingers. "I killed them. With my own hands. I'm some sort of monster. I have a hole through my chest—" He squeezes his eyes shut.

 _'Yes?'_ the voice says after a pause. _'Is there anything else you wanna complain about? I'll be here all day.'_

A snarl erupts from Ichigo's throat. He lashes out at the metal rail, claws screeching against the bars and gouging deep slashes into them.

"Shut up," he says, staring at them and breathing hard. He turns and collapses against the fence, slumping to the ground with his back to it and pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead. "You're not real, you're not real, you're not real—"

The monster is silent, not gone but just watching him. _'I'm not gonna go away just by you wishing for it, King,'_

"Shut up," Ichigo croaks. He presses his back against the rails and clamps his hand over his eyes. He shifts his hand an inch and looks up at the sky. "Who are you?"

 _'Why, don't you know?'_ it says. _'I'm you.'_

"That's not an answer," Ichigo growls.

It rolls its eyes. _'I'm your hollow aspect. I'm the things in the dark you can't hide away from. Get used to me, King. We'll never be rid of each other.'_

Ichigo clenches his teeth and lets his hand drop into his lap. He hugs a knee to his chest and rests his forehead against it, gasping for shaky breaths. "You… you're a hollow," he mutters.

The memories surface like they'd been pressing against his consciousness all this time. His sisters' blood on his hands and his body refusing to obey him and the voice of a monster raving at him, everything so vivid that it feels unreal, like a hallucination or a nightmare he's just awakened from.

"You _killed—"_ He gasps for breath like he's drowning and his claws sink into the concrete beneath him, clinging so hard his fingers ache.

 _'Would you stop that!'_ the voice snarls. _'I can't stand you! The dead are dead! Why do they matter so much to you?'_

"I cared about them!" Ichigo says. "Don't you understand even that?"

 _'I don't care about whatever people you care about!'_

"Well, of course not," Ichigo says, his fingers crumbling the concrete under his hand. "You're just a monster."

 _'And you,'_ The hollow lowers its voice into a hiss, _'are just a weak human who would be dead without me.'_

"I don't need you!" Ichigo snarls. "I never asked for you to save me!"

 _'I suppose you would rather have been left alone to die like a dog! I suppose you would rather be one of those mindless soul-devouring beasts for the rest of your pathetic existence! Maybe you would've eaten your family, your precious friends here right now. Now wouldn't that be something to watch.'_

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up," Ichigo is screaming, and his claws dig into his scalp until blood mats his hair underneath his fingers.

 _'If it's too much for you to handle, then why don't you just give up and let me have your body?'_ the hollow croons.

"I'd never!" Ichigo chokes out, curled up against the rail with his back pressed to the bars. "I hate you! Just disappear!"

A door slams open, rebounding with a rattle of metal. "Ichigo?" an incredulous voice says, then more frantically. "Ichigo!"

Footsteps rush toward him, sneakers on concrete, and Ichigo cracks open his eyes and looks up to see Tatsuki standing over him, leaning in with her hand hovering over his shoulder.

"What the hell, Ichigo? Are you okay?"

Ichigo squeezes his eyes shut and slaps her fingers aside with a flailing hand. "Get away from me."

"Hey!" Tatsuki says. "What's wrong?" Her hand reaches toward his shoulder again. Ichigo's eyes snap open and he snatches her wrist in midair.

He's suddenly struck by how fragile the bones of her arm are, how he could break them like dried firewood. He drops her wrist and draws his fingers away, pushing himself upright against the fence. He turns his head away from Tatsuki, who's hovering over him with worry furrowing her brow.

"I'm fine. Don't touch me."

The voice is silent again but he can sense it lingering in the back of his mind, watching him inscrutably and radiating frustration. Its presence isn't helping Ichigo's mood any.

Tatsuki scowls into his eyes and evidently, from what she sees there, decides he's far from fine.

 _"Ichigo."_ She sounds like she wants to smack him but he looks too pathetic for even that. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. "We're all worried about you."

Ichigo blinks up at her, trying to decipher that. "I guess I can imagine why."

"Before you say something stupid," Tatsuki says," It's not because we think you're a mental case or you're gonna eat us or whatever else. It's because we're your friends, and you've been acting lost, and hurt, and you haven't seemed like yourself."

"I'm sorry," Ichigo says. "I'm not myself."

"What happened to you?"

Ichigo hunches his shoulders and stares down at his fingers knotted together in his lap. Tatsuki sighs and her footsteps move closer. As Ichigo looks up in surprise, she settles to the floor by his side, leaning against the fence.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"What's there to tell," Ichigo says, each word brittle. "I got bit."

He closes his eyes. The memory of what happened back then still chafes at a raw place inside his heart and some part of him wants to raise heaven and hell and make everything responsible pay, and another part is stuck thinking _what if,_ what if he'd done this earlier or hadn't done that, what if he'd been faster, stronger, what if he'd taken the fall himself, and it never ends until he's thinking that there are a thousand ways it could've ended differently, so why did it have to be _this_?

In the end, he just can't think about it. So yes, there's nothing to tell.

"Right," Tatsuki says. She slings the little pack she's carrying off her shoulders and plops it on the floor between them. "Ishida's dad has this huge underground bunker in the hospital basement," she says, rummaging around. "Ishida's raiding the weapons and whatnot, but there's also enough food to last us a year."

She pulls out a fistful of foil-wrapped bars and drops them. Ichigo picks one up. "What's this thing?"

He opens it and gets a greasy cornmeal bar which looks dense enough to use as building material. He breaks off a corner and crumbles it between his fingers. "What's this supposed to be? Food?"

Tatsuki snorts and tosses him a ziploc bag of beef jerky.

Ichigo takes a piece, sniffs at it, and stuffs it whole into his mouth. "So, that Uryuu guy," he says. "Why're you with him?"

"Like it or not, he saved us. Me and Orihime. I thought he was just some antisocial nerd in class, but he showed up with his glowing bow while we were surrounded by monsters and took them all down." She shakes her head. "Monsters. It all seems so impossible. I don't suppose you know what's going on?"

"Not as much as I'd like," Ichigo says. "There's some madman named Aizen and supposedly he did all this and supposedly he's after me. He wants to take over the world or something. I guess he's just getting warmed up with this."

"Good for us," Tatsuki groans. "What're we going to do?"

"I don't know about you," Ichigo says. "I'm going to kill him."

Tatsuki is silent for several seconds. When he looks over at her, he finds her staring at him with an unreadable look in her eyes, like she's trying to decipher him.

She breaks eye contact and tugs at his wrist. "Pass the bag."

She fishes a chunk of jerky out and gnaws on it from the corner of her mouth. "So, you got attacked like me?"

"Not quite like you." Ichigo's about to say, 'your attack had survivors.' At the last second, he thinks better of it. "What went on with you guys anyway?"

Tatsuki shrugs. "After some idiot called me with a cryptic warning that told me shit about nothing, I went out to check on Orihime and you."

"You mean, what I told you not to do," Ichigo says.

"A message like that and you expect me to stay put?" Tatsuki says. "Get off your high horse, Ichigo. It all turned out fine in the end anyhow."

"What does that mean?"

She shrugs. "Oh, I almost died. Orihime got some weird powers out of nowhere and saved me. I got some weird powers and beat the hollows. We ran into a ton more on the way, then Ishida—you know, in my opinion, that guy's crushing on Orihime hard. But of course she hasn't noticed yet, because she's been crushing on someone else for ages." She gives Ichigo a calculating look.

"Huh?" Ichigo says.

Tatsuki looks away with a snort. "Nevermind. So, I was all for checking up on you at your place. Ishida was being a huge wimp about it, saying it was too dangerous, we should find somewhere to hide, and then Orihime said she didn't sense you at your house anyway. I didn't really get that, but I believed her, so I went with him."

She looks apologetic, so Ichigo says, "Yeah, I wasn't home."

"But what about your—" Tatsuki abruptly shuts her mouth. They stare at each other for a few seconds, Tatsuki looking pale like she just stepped out into quicksand. She breaks eye contact quickly and offers a painfully obvious change of subject. "So where were you?"

"Hospital," Ichigo says wearily. "Then a candy shop run by a mad scientist."

"That… sounds like a story," Tatsuki says.

Ichigo shrugs. "And now I'm back here."

"You ought to come down," Tatsuki says. "Being alone doesn't seem like it's doing you good. If you want, I'll wrangle an apology out of Ishida for you."

"That's alright," Ichigo stands up and turns around to lean over the metal railing, staring out at the night sky. "I think it's better if I stay away."

"What are you talking about this time? Ichigo! Look, I don't care if you were bitten by a rabid werewolf, we believe in you, okay? Me and Chad and Orihime."

Ichigo stares into the distance wordlessly. He doesn't know what to say. He knows he should say something. Stalling the moment he has to turn around and face Tatsuki, he lets his eyes wander over the dark shapes in the parking lot.

"Look, I can't pretend to understand what you're going through," Tatsuki says. "But—"

Ichigo flails back and clamps a hand onto her shoulder. "Shh!"

She stiffens in his hold. "What now?" she hisses.

"I sense something strange," Ichigo mutters, his focus on the parking lot down below. He crouches down and hauls Tatsuki behind him.

"Great," Tatsuki says. "I'm always out of the loop."

Ichigo pulls her up close to the rails, still hunched behind him for all the protection that'll give, and points at a spot in the middle of the parking lot.

"I can't see anything—" Tatsuki says, then sucks in a breath when Ichigo nudges her in the side. Far below them, a rift splits the air open into a gaping shape like a hungry mouth, the space inside blacker than the night. A small figure, human, leaps out of it with a beastlike grace to its movements. The reiatsu radiating from it isn't human, but it's different from any hollow he's sensed too—a predator's pure power, heedlessly destructive and rolling over the entire area like it owns it. It's stronger than anything Ichigo's felt.

The figure turns and begins to stroll toward the hospital doors, steps languid but its purpose unmistakable.

Ichigo lets out a breath in a long hiss. "Go warn everyone," he says to Tatsuki, and hauls himself over the rail, bracing to jump.

"Hey, _wait!"_ Tatsuki grabs his shoulder and yanks him back, so that he's forced to climb down. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm gonna go fight it. Or hold it off, whatever I can do. You have to take everyone else and get out of here!" He tries to knock her hand from his shoulder, but she holds on tighter.

He turns around to see her giving him a dirty look. " 'I'll fight, you all run away?' No dice."

"You don't know how powerful that thing is!"

Tatsuki shoves him by the shoulder. "Have some faith in your friends!"

Ichigo stares at her, breathing hard, at a loss for arguments and panic building in his chest at the thought of his friends in battle, his friends _dead—_

"You have to go warn them," he says weakly. "They've gotta know."

Tatsuki leans over the fence, looking down at the parking lot as a bolt of light cuts through the darkness for an instant, shooting at the figure, who bats it aside in a shower of sparks.

"They already know," Tatsuki says.

Ichigo curses, leaps at the rail, and slings himself over the top. The only reason he doesn't let go is because Tatsuki shouts "Wait!" at the last moment.

"How am I supposed to get down?" she demands.

Ichigo shrugs with one shoulder. "Take the stairs."

He leaps off the roof.

"Asshole!" Tatsuki shouts after him.

For a few seconds, nothing supports him but air rushing past him, then his feet slam into a hard surface with a jar he can feel through his spine and skull. He stumbles forward to keep his balance. A jagged bolt of pain shoots through his foot and straight up to his calf when he puts weight on it, and his leg nearly collapses underneath him. He falls to one knee with a hiss between gritted teeth.

"What do you think you're doing?" says a voice behind him. Uryuu leaps out from a window, bow already drawn and eyes fixed on the distance instead of him. "Where's Arisawa?"

"Taking the stairs," Ichigo says. He gets to his feet, gingerly testing his weight, and traces Uryuu's line of sight to the figure strolling through the parking lot. It's close enough to get a good look at now. A human-looking guy with electric blue hair and eyes, wearing white vest and pants, hands stuffed into his pockets with a serrated grin drawn across his face. On his right cheek is the fanged jawbone of some beast of prey. Reiatsu crackles around him like heat lightning.

Ichigo immediately gives up on all notions of this guy being human. He's barechested with his vest open, and it's impossible to miss the hole clear through his stomach which shows through to the other side.

"Hollow," Ichigo hisses.

"Friend of yours?" Uryuu says.

"Screw you too. Shut up and start shooting."

"For what good it'll do," Uryuu mutters. He fires off three shouts in quick succession. The figure suddenly blurs and in another blink it's in front of them. A seele schneider flares to life in Uryuu's hand just in time to deflect a bare-handed strike in a burst of blue sparks. Uryuu grits his teeth, eyes wide as he struggles against him.

The attacker bares a vicious flash of teeth, then a lightning-fast twist of his hand knocks Uryuu's arm aside with a sharp crack. Uryuu cries out, seele schneider going out and clattering to the ground.

"Shit! Uryuu!" Ichigo says.

" _This_ is what Aizen-sama's interested in?" the blue-haired man says. "A couple of kids?"

He kicks Uryuu aside with a foot to his gut and keeps advancing. "Now, who can give me a real fight?"

"Aizen," Ichigo says. "You're with Aizen!"

The man turns to him, smile widening into something inhuman. "You there. You're the one who Aizen said to bring back in as many pieces as necessary."

Ichigo draws his sword. The whisper of steel is too loud in the silence. "Who are you?" he says, pointing his blade at the man.

"Aren't you just dying to know?" he says. "I'm Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, and that'll be the last name you ever hear."

* * *

 _Gah, sorry for the super late update. Really, it's just my fault. I might have to go with a slower update schedule from now on, though, because of college. Fact, I might have to temporarily drop one of my two stories. I really don't want to, but if I have to, it'll be Pendulum. Well, the next chapter for that will be out soon no matter which way I go._

 _Please review! Reviews are the best!_


End file.
